Arunachal State Rural Livelihoods Mission (ArSRLM)

What is the Arunachal State Rural Livelihoods Mission?

Arunachal State Rural Livelihoods Mission (ArSRLM) is an autonomous society registered under the Societies Registration Act of 1860 under the aegis of the Government of Arunachal Pradesh. According to the ArSRLM portal, it is the nodal agency for implementing the NRLM / Aajeevika schemes in the state, that is, Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) of the Ministry of Rural Development.

ArSRLM states its aim as reaching the Poorest of the Poor (PoP) households across 27 districts, 128 blocks and 4,211 villages and staying engaged with them until they cross the threshold of poverty. Structurally, ArSRLM has staff at the State and Block level. The Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh is President of the Governing Body and the Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj is Vice-President; the Chief Secretary chairs the Executive Committee, with the Secretary (RD & PR) as Vice-Chairperson. Day-to-day work is run by a Chief Executive Officer cum State Mission Director.

Mission statement. ArSRLM adopts the NRLM mission: to reduce poverty by enabling poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities, resulting in appreciable improvement in their livelihoods on a sustainable basis, through building strong grassroots institutions of the poor.

What has ArSRLM achieved so far?

The ArSRLM dashboard publishes the following coverage figures:

On financial inclusion, ArSRLM reports 78,581 beneficiaries under PMSBY accident insurance, 68,637 under life insurance, 52,114 covered under CMAAY/PMJAY health insurance, 4,636 SHGs credit-linked to banks, 60,693 people covered under Financial Literacy Camps, 2,000 SHG beneficiaries under Arun Shree Rinn Yojana, and 39 Banking Correspondent Sakhis.

Who is eligible for ArSRLM support?

Who can join:

• Rural poor households in Arunachal Pradesh identified as NRLM Target Households. ArSRLM's own FAQ states that target households are identified through Participatory Identification of Poor (PIP) rather than the BPL list. A community-driven process in which community-based organisations identify the poor in the village using participatory tools, and the list is vetted by the Gram Sabha.
• At least one member, preferably a woman, from every poor family, that is the stated social mobilisation goal of DAY-NRLM.
• Rural youth aged 15 to 35 years from poor families for skill training under DDU-GKY.
• Any rural poor person willing to be entrepreneurial and self-reliant for the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP), with specific preference for highly vulnerable MGNREGA beneficiaries, marginalised sections, women, SC and ST communities and rural artisans.

Who cannot apply or is not eligible:

• Urban households are not eligible. ArSRLM is a rural livelihoods mission; urban poverty is handled by a separate urban livelihoods programme.
• There is no individual online application for cash. ArSRLM does not pay a grant into a private individual's account on demand. Money flows to groups: SHGs and their federations, not to walk-in individuals.
• Households not on the PIP list vetted by the Gram Sabha are not treated as NRLM Target Households, though the community can revisit the list.
• A person already in another SHG cannot ordinarily be a member of two SHGs drawing the same benefits.

How to apply for ArSRLM benefits

There is no online registration form for a citizen. Joining ArSRLM means joining the institutions of the poor in your own village. The steps are:

1. Find out whether your village already has SHGs. Ask at the Block Mission Management Unit (BMMU) in your block, or at the Village Organisation or Primary Level Federation if one exists. ArSRLM runs 128 BMMUs and eight District Mission Management Units: Roing, Basar, Bomdila, Daporijo, Khonsa, Pangin, Seppa and Ziro.
2. Get your household onto the Participatory Identification of Poor list. The community-based organisation prepares the list using participatory tools and the Gram Sabha vets it. This is the eligibility gate for DAY-NRLM benefits.
3. Join or form a Self Help Group. A woman member from the household joins an existing SHG, or ten to twenty women form a new one with the help of the community cadre or a Community Resource Person. ArSRLM has trained 3,522 community cadre for exactly this work.
4. Start regular savings and internal lending, and hold regular meetings. Institution Building and Capacity Building (IBCB) covers group formation, savings and credit management, group meetings and monitoring. Discipline in these three habits is what qualifies a group for funds.
5. Open the SHG bank account and complete bank linkage. ArSRLM describes SHG bank linkage as one of the most important pillars of the programme; 4,636 SHGs are already credit-linked.
6. Apply through your federation for Revolving Fund and Community Investment Fund. The SHG prepares a micro-credit or micro-investment plan; the Village Organisation or Cluster Level Federation appraises it and releases funds.
7. Take up a livelihood. Options include farm livelihoods, non-farm livelihoods, MKSP for women farmers, SVEP for village enterprises, RSETI and DDU-GKY for skills, and the UNNATI programme.

What does ArSRLM actually give a Self Help Group?

ArSRLM's financial support to institutions of the poor works in layers:

• Revolving Fund (RF); seed capital injected into the SHG's own corpus so the group can lend to members. Rs 28.65 crore has been disbursed statewide.
• Community Investment Fund (CIF). A much larger corpus routed through federations for on-lending to SHGs for livelihood investment. Rs 127.99 crore has been disbursed.
• Vulnerability Reduction Fund (VRF) — Rs 28.65 crore, used by federations to address food, health and other risks faced by the most vulnerable households.
• Vulnerability Grant Fund (VGF) to Model Cluster Level Federations, Rs 3.82 crore.
• Bank credit. ArSRLM's stated position is that the rural poor need credit at a low rate of interest and in multiple doses to make ventures economically viable, and that banks must provide adequate, timely and repeat doses of credit.

Exact per-group amounts of RF and CIF are set under DAY-NRLM norms and vary with the maturity and grading of the group, so confirm the current per-SHG figure with your Block Mission Management Unit before planning around a number.

What programmes run under ArSRLM?

• DAY-NRLM. The core mission, with four components: social mobilisation and building self-managed community institutions of rural poor women, financial inclusion, sustainable livelihoods, and social inclusion and access to entitlements through convergence.
• DDU-GKY, placement-linked skill training for rural youth aged 15 to 35 from poor families. ArSRLM reports 16 projects, 3,150 candidates enrolled, 2,624 trained, 2,407 assessed, 2,166 certified, 1,635 appointed and 1,084 continuing at least three months, with a minimum of 160 hours of soft skills, functional English and computer literacy and a minimum recommended salary of Rs 6,000 a month.
• MKSP, Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana for women farmers.
• SVEP: Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme, which supports rural entrepreneurs to set up local enterprises, with SHGs and federations identifying entrepreneurs and Community Resource Persons for Enterprise Promotion (CRP-EP) doing the handholding.
• RSETI, Rural Self Employment Training Institutes.
• UNNATI programme, IBCB, Financial Inclusion, SISD (social inclusion and social development), and farm and non-farm livelihoods verticals.

Why does an SHG not get funds, and how to fix it?

The DAY-NRLM design that ArSRLM follows makes the reasons fairly predictable:

• Irregular meetings or savings. Grading of an SHG rests on the five basic disciplines; regular meetings, regular savings, regular internal lending, regular repayment and proper book-keeping.
• Books not maintained. Missing minutes, cash book or ledger entries stall appraisal by the Village Organisation.
• No bank account or an inactive one, which blocks both RF and bank linkage.
• Household not on the PIP list vetted by the Gram Sabha.
• Micro-credit plan not appraised by the Village Organisation or Cluster Level Federation.
• Block is non-intensive. ArSRLM's implementation strategy phases blocks into resource, intensive and non-intensive categories; not every component of NRLM is rolled out in a non-intensive block at once.

The fix in almost every case runs through the community cadre and the BMMU rather than through a state office, the mission is deliberately built so that decisions sit with the federations of the poor.

Where do you contact ArSRLM?

• Address: Arunachal State Rural Livelihoods Mission, 3rd and 4th Floor, Alexander House, VIP Road, Ward No. 9, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh 791111
• Email: srlmceo@gmail.com (CEO cum State Mission Director)
• Website: srlm.arunachal.gov.in, which carries a Grievance Redressal page, a Digital Library, manuals, guidelines, annual reports and study reports
• District Mission Management Units: Roing, Basar, Bomdila, Daporijo, Khonsa, Pangin, Seppa and Ziro
• Thematic State Mission Managers are listed on the State Contacts page for financial management, institution building, social inclusion, farm livelihood, non-farm livelihood, financial inclusion and human resources.

No fee is payable to join a Self Help Group under ArSRLM, and no agent can charge for adding a name to an SHG or a federation list.

How to check your application status

ArSRLM has no individual online tracking ID because there is no individual online application in the first place; a household's progress moves through the SHG and its federation, so status has to be checked at that level rather than on a personal dashboard.

1. Ask at your Self Help Group meeting first. The group's book-keeper or the Community Resource Person attached to your Village Organisation usually knows whether your household's name has cleared the Participatory Identification of Poor list, whether the SHG's micro-credit plan has been submitted, and whether it is still pending appraisal or has been approved.
2. Check with the Village Organisation or Cluster Level Federation. Revolving Fund and Community Investment Fund releases are approved and disbursed at this level, not by the state office, so the federation's records show whether a specific SHG's fund request has been sanctioned, is under appraisal, or was returned for correction.
3. Contact the Block Mission Management Unit (BMMU) in your block. The BMMU is the operational unit closest to villages and holds records of SHG formation, grading, and bank linkage status for every SHG in the block; ArSRLM runs 128 BMMUs, one per block.
4. Go to the District Mission Management Unit if the block cannot resolve it. ArSRLM operates DMMUs at Roing, Basar, Bomdila, Daporijo, Khonsa, Pangin, Seppa and Ziro, and these can check status across multiple blocks in a district.
5. Use the Grievance Redressal page on srlm.arunachal.gov.in for a status query or complaint that a lower unit has not resolved, or write to the CEO cum State Mission Director at srlm.arunachal.gov.in / srlmceo@gmail.com.
6. For bank-linked funds (Revolving Fund, Community Investment Fund routed through a bank account), the SHG's passbook and bank statement are the most reliable record of what has actually been credited, since disbursal ultimately shows up there regardless of what any intermediate register says.

Because everything runs through the group rather than an individual account, the fastest way to get an update is usually to ask the SHG's own office-bearers before escalating to the BMMU or DMMU.